Freediving is a sport that can be taught to anyone, from responsible kids through to senior citizens. The only risk is to those with existing heart or lung conditions, so a preliminary medical check-up is essential. In instructing, I get the biggest kick out of watching beginners make those first giant steps (or fin strokes) into the depths. It’s fairly common for students to hold their breath for 3 minutes or more after just a few days of instruction, and if they have no difficulty equalising then dives of 15 to 30 metres are within the reach of even newbies. The euphoria new freedivers experience from these kinds of accomplishments is one of teaching’s biggest rewards. I still remember my own first dives to those depths, and the swell of terrifying excitement at going that little bit deeper. It’s the thrill of holding a firework after the fuse is lit, or playing chicken with an oncoming train. It’s the temptation of Icarus, played out in the world of Poseidon. But gradually, with each dive we realise that this sensation is an illusion — there was never really any danger — and it’s replaced by a revelation: that we can belong underwater, as a marine mammal, as a sea creature; that here is a world waiting for us to discover it. Grown adults resemble wide-eyed children, giggling into their snorkels, in the face of that discovery.
More than two-thirds of our planet is covered in water. All of it can be our home.
CHAPTER 6
GOING ON ALONE
And coming face to face with one’s self
It has been revealed to me that there exists an Ocean of Consciousness without limit. From It come all things of the relative plane, and in It they merge again. These waves arising from the Great Ocean merge again in the Great Ocean. I have clearly perceived all these things.
Ramakrishna
ON CHRISTMAS EVE 2008, Jimmy Montanti arrived after a marathon voyage from Sicily, ready to spend a month training with me and another Italian freediver, Michele Tomasi, who was visiting the island with his young family. Jimmy’s luggage was delayed in the trip through Miami, so I lent him clothes and equipment while we tracked it down. On the bag’s arrival, he hugged it ecstatically; when he opened it, I saw why. The contents and weight were mostly made up of car-battery-sized blocks of 36-month-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano. The plasticky American Parmesan-substitute I had in the fridge was thrown in the bin, and for the next several weeks we feasted on pasta dishes topped with the crystalline flakes and crumbs of real Italian cheese.
After my experiences in 2008, it was clear that narcosis was a factor I would need to adapt to if I wanted to go deeper. The best way I knew of doing this was through ‘hangs’. These are basically static apneas at depth, and I would typically use a heavy weight to give me a free ride down to a depth of between 50 and 65 metres, where I would wrap my leg around the rope and lock my fingers together in front of me. This position allowed me to close my eyes and relax every muscle in my body. It was an evolution of one of the very first exercises I had started doing when I discovered freediving in Utila, Honduras, spending minutes lying motionless in sandy gullies at 10-metre depths. Now that I was doing them at five to six times the depth, the feelings of euphoria were enhanced by the narcosis of high-pressure nitrogen and carbon dioxide in my blood. As these built up during the hang, the narcosis would become more and more intense; but without any tasks to complete, I was able to retain full control of my mind while observing the gradual changes in my body.
First up, my heart rate slowed to one beat every 2 to 3 seconds. It was so slow that instead of the regular ‘da-doom, da-doom’ sound we’re accustomed to hearing, there was actually a pregnant pause between the two parts of each beat. I heard it as ‘glung . . . gloong . . . . . ., glung . . . gloong . . . . . .’ All of the blood had been shunted in from my limbs and periphery to the core of my torso, raising my internal blood pressure, and my body was compensating for this by slowing the heart’s rhythm.
As remarkable as these physical changes were, they were nothing compared with what was happening inside my head — essentially, a stripping back of the sensation of my ‘self’ to the most basic raw material. The body? That disappeared after a few seconds of being relaxed on the bottom: due to either lack of stimulus or shifting blood, or both, the nerves in my skin and limbs stopped communicating any information back to the brain. This is a common enough experience; floating in a bath or even watching a movie in the cinema can yield the same sensation. Next, the head and face itself were subtracted from the equation. It took a little longer for this to occur, as there are many tiny, overlooked muscles in the face that we don’t normally take into consideration but which are often held in contraction. For example, if my mouth and jaw are completely relaxed then my lips will be slightly parted. Shutting my eyelids actually requires a fibril of contraction, so in their most relaxed state my eyes are half-open, the upper lids sagging down over the cornea. Once every fascia of every muscle was completely relaxed, then my face ceased to be a part of my awareness — no more a part of my ‘self’ in that moment than the surrounding liquid. All that remained, in terms of sensory information being transmitted to the brain, was my vision. With my eyes half-open there was, obviously, no stopping the light-sensitive cells at the back of my eyes from relaying news of what they saw. If anything interesting had been happening in front of me, there would be no way I could ‘unsee’ it. However, at 60 metres in Dean’s Blue Hole there is a muted, dusky light, and nothing at all in the water column. Fish rarely swim into such open spaces, and the walls of the Blue Hole are 100 metres away at that depth — beyond the limit of visibility. In the absence of anything to focus on, my eyes came to rest at the perfectly neutral focal point and remained there, undistracted. Nothing about my field of vision changed for minutes, and this meant that I became ‘immune’ to what I was seeing.
No body, no face, no taste, smell or sound, and finally no vision. All evidence of physical matter had been stripped away from my awareness. In such a state, the mind has very little to occupy itself with, and immeasurable tracts of time passed without any thought presenting itself to my consciousness. There might, however, be a faint awareness of this fact, an unvoiced notion of ‘Ooh, my mind is empty — this is working great!’, but on some level even this was still mental activity. Only when this last patina of thought dissolved into the void did the mind itself drop away from my sense of self.
Now my consciousness was naked, stripped of every material and channel that normally kept it occupied. It is not floral prose or exaggeration to say that this is a state of ‘pure being’. For in the end, all we are is consciousness. Our thoughts, emotions, memories and hopes are all internal experiences that happen to that consciousness, complementing the external experiences of sound, light and the smell of coffee. My consciousness, the silent witness to everything I experience, doesn’t tell my brain to have an idea, or make a calculation: those mental processes happen and we merely experience the results. What we consider to be ourselves (body, mind, memories) is in fact a vehicle for our consciousness, but the consciousness is a silent passenger. Are you your memory of having your wisdom teeth removed? No, of course not. Are you the stream of rambling thoughts you have as you drive to work? No, you’re not those either. You are what experiences them: the sense of watchfulness and awareness. That is all.
What’s more, this is the only thing that we can know for sure is real. As Sam Harris puts it in Waking Up, an impressively objective treatise on spirituality, ‘Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion . . . The birth of consciousness must be the result of organisation. Arranging atoms in certain ways appears to bring about an experience of being that very collection of atoms.’
I’ll get back to that freediver, hanging on the end of the line at 60 metres and experiencing nothing other than awareness. But first I’d like to sidetrack into a ‘thought experiment’ inspired by the experience of this kind of diving. What if we could subtract everything — literally every material upon which consciousness can operate. Not just sentience, but the stored mental material as
well. For instance, as I hang on the end of my line, even if I’ve succeeded in doing away with my body and senses, it is still possible for me to have thoughts, voiced in my head as words, about things that have happened to me, or things I would like to do in the future. This is because I still have the mental software for language, as well as a hard drive full of memories. So let’s remove all of that. Now the mind is by definition empty, since it has no words or even images (which could only come from memories) to think with. There is, however, no reason why consciousness itself wouldn’t remain. What would that experience be like?
Perhaps the closest we can come to understanding it is the description by Helen Keller, who became deaf and blind at the age of 19 months, of what her life was like before she learnt to communicate by touch. She likened the blur of experience to being ‘at sea in a dense fog’. After acquiring her first word, ‘Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me . . . Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.’
Imagine then, removing from this language-less ‘sea of dense fog’ even the capacity to feel, taste and smell the surrounding environment, as well as the distant memories of those 19 months of being able to hear and see. What would be left with which to even sense the passing of time? There would be no reference, not even the rhythm of breathing, or the slow heart beat that I experience in the depths. With no content or measure, time would condense/expand into homogeneity. A year, a minute, a lifetime — how would they differ?
It is possible to imagine such a state occurring, and maybe with technology even induce it, by temporarily shutting down access to the areas of the brain that govern sentience, memories and speech. But it is very difficult to imagine just what that state would be like. How, for instance, would it differ from the experience of being a tree, which also lacks sentience or a mental substrate? Does a tree have a similar form of timeless and contentless consciousness?
This is panpsychism, a controversial notion that everything in the universe might be conscious, potentially conscious, or conscious when put into certain configurations. The Sufi mystic Ibn al-Arabi summarised it by saying, ‘God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.’ I might replace ‘god’ with ‘consciousness’, but many would argue that they are one and the same. The point is that there must be a smooth continuum in the degree of self-awareness between rock and man.
But wait — that continuum can go in the other direction, too! If we added to our senses the power of echolocation, we would acquire another layer of information about the world around us: like bats and dolphins, we would perceive the exact dimensions of things as well as their distance from us and even their density, regardless of whether it was night or day. If we had ampullae of Lorenzini (found around the noses of sharks), we could detect electromagnetic fields such as the one surrounding the earth that so many animals use for navigation. And these are just the existing ways presented by evolution with which we could expand our consciousness. Bionic arms have been developed that communicate rudimentary feedback from touch, so that we can not only grip but feel through an artificial appendage. Why stop at two arms? Or why not tentacles? And with bluetooth and internet, why would the appendages even need to be connected to the body? Our limbs and nerve endings are envoys from the mind, expanding the scope of our consciousness into the world, but there’s no reason to limit ourselves to the attached biological ones we are born with. It is entirely plausible to imagine someone feeling that a surgical instrument, a digger arm or a car tyre is a part of their self to the same extent that the fingers I am pressing against my keyboard are a part of my self.
The Neuralink project headed by entrepreneur Elon Musk is one of several fledgling attempts to do all this, and more. Our memories could be augmented by instant access to all the information stored on the internet (we wouldn’t google it, we’d just ‘remember’ it). Would such an expansion, of mind and body, alter the nature of consciousness itself? In Waking Up, Sam Harris goes on to say, ‘It is, however, possible to notice that consciousness — that in you which is aware of your experience in this moment — does not feel like a self. It does not feel like “I”. What you are calling “I” is itself a feeling that arises among the contents of consciousness. Consciousness is prior to it, a mere witness of it, and, therefore, free of it in principle.’
Whether you lose all sentience and verbal dialogue, or whether you expand your senses to take in the entirety of the planet and link your mind to all of its computing power, it seems that the hidden mirror that somehow illuminates the experience with awareness will remain unsullied.
*
As transcendent as the experience I was having at 60 metres was, it was still contingent on my physical body, and that body had non-negotiable requirements, such as a supply of oxygen and a distaste for carbon dioxide. These priorities started to make themselves known about 4 minutes into the dive. At first I would stay non-responsive, calm and detached, but at a certain point I would need to check my watch, to have a second gauge on how much longer I could stay submerged. Sometimes I would check my watch again, at what felt like a moment later, to find that nearly half a minute had passed. When thoughts are scarce, time really does lack any sense of scale. Finally, with the onset of breathing reflexes I would slowly start to make my way back towards the surface, pulling softly on the line, my legs trailing limply behind. The longest of these hangs lasted over 6 minutes, around 4 minutes of which were spent motionless at depth.
Could such intimate contact with an unadulterated state of pure awareness enhance our ability to be ‘present’ in our lives — what is commonly called mindfulness these days? Such an idea is supported by findings about the brain’s quality of neuroplasticity: fMRI scans (imaging of brain function) have shown that extensive meditation causes changes to both the structure and function of the brain. If it is so, then this is yet another way in which freediving, which seems to be a shortcut to this state, can positively influence our lives. After all, lying in an octopus’s garden and letting the cool water wash away your thoughts has more immediate appeal to sitting still on a cushion while your knees scream blue murder and your nose itches incessantly.
These attempts at finding enlightenment while dangling on the end of a rope like a baited hook alternated with more primal moments, when I would let my reptilian brain take over in the quest for food. One particular afternoon after training, Jimmy and I set out from the northern coast at a place called Chimney Rock, one of the first sites I had ever spearfished on Long Island. That first time, in 2005, I had battled for an hour to remove a grouper from a rocky ledge; then, as I swam towards shore holding it on the spear, a mid-sized reef shark had approached me from behind, concealing itself in my blind spot until it was almost upon me. A wary glance over my shoulder revealed its toothy leer, and in my fright I threw away the fish, watching as the shark tore it from the spear like a shish kebab. From that day on, I always towed a big floating catch bucket so that the fish wouldn’t continue bleeding into the water.
Now, Jimmy and I pushed our bucket out through a section of breaking waves in order to reach the reef edge, where the coral and rock fringe of the island bordered a flat expanse of white sand at a depth of 14 metres. We steadily accumulated snappers and grouper as we moved south along the coast. We also accumulated an escort of frustrated reef sharks. Each time we speared a fish and brought it to the surface they would rush to the scene of the crime, incited by the sound of the fish struggling on the spear, then follow the slick of fish blood upwards to our bucket. There the trail ended, and this seemed to flummox and infuriate the sharks, who zoomed around us in circles trying to locate the missing bleeder. We would wait until they cooled down before searching for more prey.
; After covering about a kilometre in distance, we turned to retrace our swim back up the coast. The sun was low on the horizon now, and just as we were about to cross the breakers back into the lagoon a large, silver disc-shaped fish swam boldly past us. It was a permit, a game fish prized for both its fight and taste. Reflexively I dived, pulled the band of my Hawaiian sling back, and loosed a spear into the flank of the fish. The permit gave a staccato burst of its tail that carried it down the reef edge in the direction we had just returned from. Jimmy and I sprinted after it in pursuit, mashing our fins into the surface and panting through our snorkels as we tried to keep up. The sharks followed close behind, by now associating any movement on our part with the potential for a free meal on theirs. With the heavy spear projecting at a right-angle from its side, the permit couldn’t swim at full speed and we were able to just keep it in sight. Each time it seemed to slow and we tried to swim down to approach it, the fish would find new vigour and accelerate away from us again. This continued for 10 minutes, during which time we covered the entire kilometre of coastline we had just returned from! Finally exhausted, the permit laid itself down in a sandy gully, and with the sharks converging I knew I would have to be quick. I told Jimmy, who was filming with his video camera, to back me up, then swam down to grasp the shaft of the spear with both hands. Silver shapes flashed around the reef, closing in on my position, but it was impossible to keep track of all the sharks — I only hoped that Jimmy was watching in case any of them decided to charge me. The fish struggled against the barb of the spear as I swam with it towards the surface, looking upwards to locate the bucket. Luckily I didn’t see what Jimmy was filming as he waited, with the bucket, above me. First one shark, then another, swam directly upwards from beneath me, homing in on the bleeding permit. Each time, one of my fins, which I was whipping to and fro like the tails of trapped eels, would collide with the cheek of the closest shark, causing it to veer sharply away from between my legs. I vaguely felt the collisions with my fins, but my focus was on getting the fish into the bucket; after I’d achieved this, I was alarmed to see just how close the sharks had come. Jimmy continued filming the frenzied scene, laughing all the while.
Oxygen Page 14